The challenges facing institutional and commercial facilities are well known to engineering and maintenance managers and directors. What might catch them off guard, though, is the way these issues are evolving. Ongoing issues — staffing tops everyone’s list — are becoming more entrenched and stubborn, while new issues — incorporating technology advances, for example — seem to crop up weekly.
Unfortunately, managers cannot address these challenges individually. The true complexity of tackling challenges and setting priorities in 2026 is that no issue stands alone.
“These challenges are interconnected,” says Matthew Belasco, director of maintenance, operations and transportation for the Pittsburg Unified School District in California. “Staffing impacts compliance. Compliance affects project timelines. Capital planning influences workforce demands and ongoing maintenance costs.
“Addressing them in silos is no longer effective. Success in 2026 requires integration and collaboration — aligning people, processes and infrastructure under a shared strategic vision.”
For Belasco and the other members of the Facilities Maintenance Decisions editorial advisory board, success in 2026 will depend on their ability to address an evolving set of challenges and set realistic priorities for the near future.
Any discussion of the challenges facing facilities departments — in fact, almost any conversation with managers about anything — eventually turns to staffing. Recruiting new front-line technicians has become nearly a full-time job for managers.
“Recruiting is only part of the equation,” Belasco says. “Retention and engagement are equally important factors. We are investing in workforce development. That includes strengthening onboarding programs, creating clearer career pathways and creating internal training programs to build skills from within rather than relying solely on external hiring. We’re also focusing on leadership development at the supervisory level, recognizing that strong front-line leadership directly impacts retention and morale.”
Unfortunately, staffing problems can create a series of cascading issues for managers and their teams.
“When you don’t have enough trade coverage and field supervision, you lose capacity for planned work,” says Terrel Chesson, deputy director of the department of general services for the city of Baltimore. “You end up in triage mode. The team is still working hard, but the organization is reacting instead of driving the work. When that happens, productivity suffers — not because people aren’t working but because the work becomes fragmented and constantly interrupted.”
Like most managers, the advisory board members are developing and implementing a range of staffing strategies designed to more effectively address facilities needs. One strategy involves rethinking the responsibilities and activities of existing staff.
“We change between zone maintenance to team projects to get larger projects done in multiple zones during the off season,” says Joe Kovolyan, director of landscape services, arboretum and botanical gardens, at the University of Missouri. “Cross-training of the team helps keep them engaged and gives us the flexibility to move people around where needed. We are always looking to adjust the landscape to reduce labor time while enhancing the look.”
Rethinking responsibilities also applies to managers and supervisors in facilities departments.
“Rather than simply filling vacancies, we are restructuring our staffing model to better align with system growth and asset complexity,” says Joe Brothman, director of general services for UCI Health in Irvine, California. “Our strategy includes adjusting supervisory ratios, creating specialized technical roles for critical systems, aligning systemwide resources with existing positions and strengthening succession planning.”
The staffing problems facing managers are not limited to recruiting and hiring entry-level technicians. Managers also must contend with the impact that departing older workers has on the remaining staff. These workers often take with them decades of experience and insights on ensuring facilities operate safely and reliably.
“How do we replace staff and the loss of institutional knowledge that is occurring as the cycle of life continues to evolve?” asks Keith Tate, facilities management director for Polk County, Florida. “The utilities division started a pilot program while the other divisions are in line with their own versions of a career ladder program.
“The mindset is to hire entry-level employees and have them go through an industry certified training program, which requires them to pass a test to gain a certificate or credential over a pre-determined timeline. They will continue through the program until they have completed all levels. The expected benefit to the employee is gaining experience while progressing up the salary level, thereby reducing the need to switch jobs to make more money.”
The scope of the challenges facing advisory board members also includes the need to ensure their operations and facilities comply with an evolving array of codes, standards and regulations.
“Compliance requirements continue to grow more complex and demanding,” Belasco says. “Regulatory expectations, documentation standards and reporting requirements require more administrative time and more rigid and structured internal processes, while navigating the increasingly challenging workforce.”
“In terms of compliance, we’re working to standardize processes and leverage technology where possible. Rather than looking at compliance as a reactive obligation, we are trying to embed it into daily operations so that it becomes part of the culture rather than an afterthought or additional duties.”
Belasco says project planning also has become more challenging for his organization due to uncertain costs, longer lead times for materials and equipment, and the need to align capital improvements with sustainability and resiliency goals.
“For project planning, we are implementing longer-term forecasting and cross-departmental collaboration,” he says. “Early engagement with finance, operations and the capital projects teams allows us to anticipate issues and adjust scopes accordingly.”
Among the growing challenges in healthcare facilities is incorporating new and expanded facilities into an organization’s portfolio of existing buildings.
“One of the most immediate challenges we are facing is the integration of newly acquired facilities into our existing operational framework,” Brothman says. “Growth through acquisition brings opportunity, but it also exposes variability, such as different procurement practices, vendor contracts, maintenance standards, documentation systems and compliance maturity.”
For most organizations, there is not a defined process for bringing these facilities into the portfolio and ensuring they operate as intended.
“Every organization trying to achieve an enterprise structure is unique with different obstacles and opportunities,” Brothman says. “Newly integrated facilities must be transitioned into our standardized procurement and vendor catalog to ensure pricing consistency, service expectations, contract compliance and risk mitigation.”
Managers in higher education facilities also must contend with challenges related to the elevated role of campus landscapes and outdoor areas in facilities’ image and safety.
“First impressions for recruitment have gained a strong focus after the downturn during COVID, but the other big change is campus safety and what that means to the university,” Kovolyan says. Managers are paying more attention than ever to issues such as improved lighting, reducing dark landscape areas, improving sightlines and cutting back vegetation for fire safety and crime safety.
“We’re training for our team to be more observant while out on campus, to be that extra set of eyes and ears in working with our police department,” he says. “The trick is to support and accomplish all these goals while not diminishing the campus aesthetics that the university is known for.”
Given these evolving and interconnected challenges throughout facilities, advisory board members say the priorities they set must take into account a host of new realities.
For Tate, the shift in priorities reflects changes taking place in local government and law enforcement. In recent years, his department has supported the county’s expansion and upgrade of public safety facilities. Their priorities have involved managing the construction of nine new fire rescue stations, as well as a new sheriff’s office district command station and training facility.
“Now that Polk County is nearing the finish line of the public safety initiative, we are starting to see a shift in focus toward the mental health community,” Tate says. “During the next five years, I expect the design to be completed for a new mental health campus. I believe this commitment is in line with a national movement to address the growing mental health needs of our society.”
While Brothman and other healthcare facilities managers are dealing with the addition of facilities, many state and city governments — faced with aging facilities, some more than a century old — must address the opposite issue: too much space. In Baltimore, Chesson says his challenge is to stop spreading limited maintenance and contract capacity across too much underused or inefficient space.
“Part of the reason aging infrastructure feels unmanageable is because the footprint is large, the buildings are old, and every square foot carries an operating cost,” Chesson says. “Rightsizing lets us be more honest and more strategic about what we should operate, what we should consolidate, what we should repurpose, and what we should exit.
“That’s not just a real estate conversation. It’s a maintenance strategy. When we reduce and optimize footprint, we reduce the number of aging systems we’re trying to keep alive at the same time, and we can redirect limited dollars and labor toward the facilities that matter most.”
Successfully addressing complex maintenance and engineering challenges and setting effective priorities in 2026 will involve open-mindedness to new strategies.
“The answer is you must embrace change,” Tate says. “Preach the narrative that the only way to improve is to do things in a way that you have never done before. Say it so much that people cringe when you say the phrase.”
For editorial advisory board members and their peers, these efforts will reflect the increased role of facilities in the mission of organizations.
“Facilities leadership in 2026 requires strategic thinking, financial literacy and operational discipline,” Brothman says. “It demands a willingness to standardize, to measure performance, and to hold systems and people accountable. Facilities teams function is no longer simply operational support. It is strategic infrastructure.”
Dan Hounsell is senior editor for the facilities market. He has more than 30 years of experience writing about facilities maintenance, engineering and management.
